the calm before the storm of awesomeness!

Hello!
I have been unabashedly joyous these past couple days. In Oviedo we've had a record number of sunny, warm days (the temperature even getting past 70! whooo!) and, even though this is my last week of classes, all of my classes have been cancelled. I rocked an exam last Friday and only have two more academic things to do before finishing up in Oviedo...also, I spontaneously completed 7 pages of my thesis the other day, a burst of productivity I can't quite explain. Pentecost has really renewed my spirit. I've been diligently working out every day and sticking to my diet, although the pink scale I bought at the Chinese store which says "miracle cat mew mew" on it doesn't seem to be too efficient in actual weighing. But my clothes feel good and my friend Carla observed a difference over Skype. If weight loss can be seen over Skype, it must be real.
Right now I'm planning out my travels. There's so much to plan, but some things are coming along quite well. Pham and I will CouchSurf in Cork and we have a couple maybes in Galway. Our plan is to rent a car, go to Blarney Castle, meander along the coast, go see Bunratty Castle where there are reenactors showing scenes from traditional Irish life, and then a medieval banquet! Then we'll continue up to Galway and hopefully catch some traditional music which sounds like is abundant there. Also, I really want to go to one bar in particular famous for its patrons speaking conversational Irish. That would be awesome. Then we'll be off to the Cliffs of Moher and whatever else we find before we drive back to Cork and spend the night there, flying to Dublin the next day, where we will visit the Guinness factory, the Jameson whiskey factory, and hopefully either a Music or "Scenes from Irish Literature" pub crawl. In order to avoid paying for a place to stay which we would in reality only visit for a couple hours, Pham is advocating staying up all night before our early morning flights.
Never in my life have so much sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption actually been planned out.
After that I'm off to Barcelona, but only for a couple days...I'll go back later. Then ROMA!
I was disappointed with the hostels I found online and since I want to stay a week CouchSurfing isn't really an option. When someone you don't know is offering a free place to stay and their company, two to three nights is just about the max. And even though the prospect of staying with nuns sounded kind of cool, I really want a place to do laundry and cook for myself to avoid both outrageous Roman prices AND calories.
So I went to Craig's List and found some great deals...rooms in private apartments which are the same price as a hostel or cheaper. I've found one I really like for 25 euros a night with a 25-year-old female biology student and her terrier, with kitchen, laundry, internet, etc. all included. It is a 15-minute walk from St. John Lateran!!!!!! It looks like it's a little far from the downtown area, but close to two metro stops and, according to her, a 30 minute walk from the Collosseum. I think, though, it might be nice to stay in a quieter area so that I can save all my energy for the marathon of sight-seeing I'll be undertaking. I have a feeling that when I'm out in Rome I'll just keep repeating "I'm in ROME!" to myself and trying to catch my breath because it will be constantly taken away.
The girl, Anna Rita, spent a year in Barcelona so she speaks great Spanish, which is a plus because I would rather speak to someone who speaks good Spanish than crappy English. She has written me a couple very nice emails, which to me is important. I think that the way people write emails reflects something profound about who they are. If you don't bother to even write a Hello, write in complete sentences, or capitalize, and also do not provide me with hardly any information about the apartment and the area it's in, will you be the kind of person I really want to spend a week living with?
So, thank you Craig's List! I'm open to suggestions as to what I HAVE to see.
I haven't planned out the rest of Italy. I have too many places I want to go, and I haven't even looked at a map to see where they are. I would like to spend some time in Florence...also Siena, Assisi, Lanziano, Pietrelcino, Monte Cassino...I think I'll have to scale down my plans and come back to reality. Any other ideas?
Then about 10 days in Barcelona where I'd like to go to Montserrat, Menorca and Tarragona as well.
Then Carla is coming! We are starting off in Santiago de Compostela and then on to Oviedo and we may just go to Italy. I'm leaving it up to her, but I would have no problem going back, even after having just been there. Italy would be a heck of a lot more exciting than Oviedo.
Every once in a while I have to remind myself that this weekend I'm travelling as well...heading south to Andalucía...Málaga, Granada and Sevilla. I am staying with a friend in Málaga, so I'll get to see three friends from grad school there, which will be refreshing. Then I'm staying in hostels in Granada and Sevilla, both of which have rooftop terraces. It's a small detail that I'm excited about. The only things I've planned to do are to see the Alhambra in Granada and the fine arts museum in Sevilla, thanks to my roommate in grad school Heather's suggestions. She said the museum there is the place to go for Baroque, Sevilla-school art (unsurprisingly). Yay.