belovedesh

Barcelona. A beautiful place where the Cheetah Girls visited in their second movie. A place where the 1992 Olympics took place. A place where the architect, Gaudí, claimed as his home. Barcelona is located on the coast of Spain and is the capital of Catalonia. The weather in Barcelona is very similar to the weather in California. I have always wanted to visit Spain because as a student of Spanish for 12 years, you study Spain a lot, and it only makes sense to have to visit it at some point because of all the cultural history. Many people in Barcelona, speak very little English or it is very broken. The people that do speak English, speak as though they are translating the Spanish to English. For example instead of saying “my mom’s dog” they will say “the dog of my mom.” I also learned that they study the customs, clothing, food, etc. of America in school, just like Spanish students study all of these for Spain, Latin American countries, and South American countr...

Something that my brother and my cousin and I like to do is to try out new doughnut places.  In Austin, Texas, a new doughnut shoppe called Voodoo Doughnuts opened and so we decided to try it out.  According to dictionary.com Voodoo is defined as a "polytheistic religion practicing chiefly by West Indians, deriving principally from African cult worship, and contain gin elements borrowed from the catholic religion. Voodoo Doughnuts is originally based out of Portland, Oregon and is open 24 hours, which is great if you have the late night munchies. When you first walk into the shoppe it has a very punk feeling, where most of the decorations describe either music, skeletons, or well... doughnuts. Interestingly enough, the store had a huge emphasis on the color pink.  The line that you have to stand in to get the doughnuts seems very long, but there are menus that you can read to pass the time. The place is filled with interesting types of doughnuts ...

Sometimes when people have a midlife crisis they decide to reexamine their life and change things or take a trip. A movie released a couple years ago that was based off of the book Eat Pray Love, and many people after reading the book or watching the movie, decided that they wanted to have a trip like this. I admit, I am guilty of that. India was my Eat. Pray. Love trip, and I never would have expected that. Eat As I mentioned before, I love Indian food. If you ever want to eat Indian food, please hit me up. So being able to spend a month eating Indian food was awesome and delicious and I was very content. The flavors are incredible and it was wonderful to eat food with spices and flavor after eating at a dining hall for 4.5 months. I got to eat all of my favorite foods and drink tea, laasi, and coconut water. This was probably the happiest I have ever been with food. However, I did not get to eat my last week in Indian because I ended up getting a viral infection that caused me to...

Jaipur, also known as the pink city that has over 3600 temples, is probably known for all the stereotypical things that people think of when they think of India- palaces, elephants, and food. Jaipur is also very famous for block printing. All over Jaipur are palaces. Some palaces you can actually go inside, where as others are not accessible to the public. One of the palaces that we got to see was called the Mirror Palace. This was located inside of Amer (pronounced um- burr) Fort. This palace was made completely out of mirrors from Belgium. Amer Fort is filled with lots of artistic Hindu style of elements. Amer Fort was absolutely beautiful and all I could think of was how blessed we are to live in such a world where there is such incredible history.   We also got to see and walk around parts of the City Palace, because people still can live there today. The City Palace is a place that is recommended that you visit, but we were all disappointed. We thought that the other pal...

 Many people say that Paris is the city of love but I beg to differ. I think the real city of love is Agra. There are two places that you must see when you go to Agra- Red Fort of Agra and Taj Mahal. These two places have incredible history and incredible love stories along with it. Agra is a Mughal is city that had 6 rulers. One of them was named Akbar. Akbar is known as one of the greatest rulers in the Mughal dynasty. He chose to build the Red Fort after his rise to power and used it as a military point as well as a palace. He was married to woman named Jodha who was from a different part of India. This is where the love comes into play. Because Jodha was from a different part of India, Akbar had some of the architecture of her home brought to the Fort. That is why some of the architecture of the Fort is from Rajasthan. The love story of Jodha and Akbar is wonderful and if you want to know more about it you should watch the Hindi movie called Jodha Akbar... one of my favorite...