Days 1 & 2 since Rosa crossed the pond!

1 Día, 1 de Septiembre

Overslept to pick up Rosa from airport, takes about an hour on the metro to get from Puerta del Sol to the airport, and then there is a trek through the airport to Terminal One. Of course. I met Rosa coming out of arrivals after searching the taxi area to make sure she didn’t beat me out there…so after picking up Rosa, I had to go exchange my roll-y bag for my backpacking backpack…this was a challenge.

The people in charge of the lockers did not want to make this easy, so a lot of Spanish later…I have two lockers on two different sides of the room. The process of switching from the roll-y bag to the backpacking backpack was…imposible. I had my suitcase exploding everywhere, both lockers were open, and everyone could see me packing up my (ironed) underwear. About 20 minutes later my bags are finally packed (more or less) and I lock up my lockers, and we head back into the airport so Rosa can finally go to the bathroom.

We then did the trek (in the opposite direction) back to the metro so we could go the train station to validate our eurail passes and get our train tickets to Salamanca!!! We had a light lunch (sandwich and Fanta) at the train station, then we were on our way to Salamanca. The three hour train ride wasn’t too bad, except when Rosa was asleep and I was bored. I woke her up to see the giant wall in Ávila. We got to the Salmanca train station, and we were buying our night train tiket s to Barcelona, and after a brief Spanish conversation figuring out when the train left and what kind of seats we would have, I looked to Rosa and went “well?”…COMPLETELY forgetting Rosa speak Spanish. SO we FINALLY get into Salamanca, and we headed to our hostel/hotel via the Plaza Mayor and got settled in. And then it started thunderstorming. But, we headed out anyway, got some of the best ice cream in Spain, and then I gave her a quick tour of Salamanca, still in the rain.

We went to the catedral and saw the inside of La Catedral Nueva (I hadn’t seen it from the ground floor before). It somehow looks even bigger from down there. We were lucky that no tour groups were out and about so we had the cathedral pretty much to ourselves, which made the visit increíble. We then headed into La Catedral Viejo (the first time I’ve walked inside (minus a view from another tour we did). The inside of this cathedral, while not as tall, is still impressive. There is art from the 12^th century, and it was pretty great to see the difference in architecture. I had some practice with my Spanish trying to translate the signs on the walls J. After the cathedrals we stopped by the ISA office so that Rosa could meet my directors (and we could pick up our Casa Lis tickets), and they were all super friendly and luckily they were speaking Spanglish because I still forgot that Rosa doesn’t speak Spanish. Then we walked down to the toro y la puenta romana (the rain had finally let up a little bit). I explained the headless Toro and then we crossed the bridge and back, and it started thundering again. So, we headed back to the Plaza Mayor in hopes of watching it light up (one of my favorite things to see), however we were early, so we started walking to the supermercado (Carrefour). It started POURING on our way so we were huddled under an awning waiting for it lighten up enough to run to the store. We eventually made it, bought some water and “Train Snacks” and headed back to hotel to drop off our stuff, and I had to put on warmer clothes—the first time I think it has EVER been cold in Salamanca.

We went out to dinner at this little place right off the plaza. A futbol game was on, Salamanca v Somebody else from Spain…and the Salmantinos weren’t cheering for Salamanca! Crazy. I had melon soup (with some jamón in it), bacalao, and ice cream, and Rosa had melon soup, lomo and sorbet (we shared the deserts).  We walked back through the Plaza (this time it was lit up), then we headed back to the hotel, showered, and relaxed while watching the Spanish Disney Channel. (my luggage had once again exploded at this point).

 

2^o Día, 2 de septiembre

Overslept. Only a little oversleeping though, we had a big day planned. First things first, we got organized and repacked (a bit of work for me), and then checked out of the hotel and headed out into Salamanca, luckily in the sun this time. First we went to exchange Rosa’s money, then we headed to the main Cursos Internacionales building to see if my BULATS scores had come in. They sent me to the Juan de Encima. Who sent me to Anaya, who sent me to the Plaza de Escuelas Mayores, which sent me to the Plaza de Escuelas Menores. And they told me that, no, the results were not in yet. Between visiting these wonderful secretaries that kept sending me in circles, we stopped at my favorite pastry place and got out pastries para llevar, and ate in the Plaza de Anaya, with gardens and a great view of las catedrales. While I was in the Plazas de escuelas going door to door, I left Rosa in front of the fachada of the university to look for the frog. When I returned, it was still unfound, but did end up finding it pretty quickly J Lucky her J. Then we went into the university, and I gave her a pretty decent tour of the rooms and explained the stair case.

We then headed back to the cathedral to do the Rooftop Tour…we walked around the tops of both cathedrals (winding staircases! AY!), had great views of Salamanca, and we got to walk around the top of the inside of the cathedral and look down on where we had been walking around yesterday. I gave a shortened version of the tour I went on in Julio (i.e. me trying to remember everything that I learned). After the cathedrals we headed to Huerto de Calixto y Melibea, the jardines de la Celestina. I summarized the tragic story and we walked around the gardens and then headed to Casa Lis, an “art nouveau” museum, with lots of Picasso (toro drawings, paintings, a copper looking thingies), figurines, fans, jewelry, furniture, freakishly detailed glass vases and the like, and a giant Stained Glass center that was the entire center of the museum (The  main attraction of Casa Lis-check out Rosa’s post card).

After Casa Lis we headed to ISA to borrow some wifi, make reservations for Rome, print reservations, and email mom to tell her I successfully picked up Rosa and we were headed to Barcelona tonight. After that we had lunch at a restaurant I have walked past everyday for the last two months on my way to class. It was delicious, I had bistec, enalada rusa, y tortilla frances. Rosa had cabrito (kid/goat). Very yummy lunch. We then headed to Valour for chocolate con churros, and then stood outside the cathedral looking at the fachada for the astronaut (not the original fachada, astronaut put in 1991) for a good thirty minutes. The astronaut remains unfound. Guess we’re coming back!

We then picked up our bags that were being held at the hostel and WALKED to the train station…not too far, to my surprise and enjoyment J We took a train back to Madrid so we could catch our night train to Barcelona (where I am typing this now). Nothing too exciting happened at the train station, I bought a sandwich that looks delicious (Rosa already had hers). We are settled into our train more or less (waiting for them to turn the lights off so we can sleeeeep). En la mañana-BARCELONA!!!

 

End of Salmanca...

So much has been going on in Salamanca! Finishing up classes and exams, packing, and saying goodbye to my Spanish home.

To catch everybody up:

Jess and I did a day trip to Ciudad Rodrigo (about an hour bus ride away from Salamanca) just to check it out. It was pretty neat-the city was celebrating its 200^th anniversary of something Napoleon related, and there were Spanish flags, French flags, and British Flags all over the place. The city seemed to have two parts, the old and the new. And by old I mean Old like Salamanca Old. There was a fort that we walked all the way around, and we took lots of pictures, and then we went for an adventure down to the river, and then accidentally ended up in the barrio. So we turned around and walked back up the huge hill we had come down to see the river, and then found their Plaza Mayor, which isn’t as awesome as Salamanca, but is still pretty neat.

I found a new favorite treat, Happy Hippos. Happy Hippos are a white chocolate/crispy delicious thing I found in the supermarket, and I can’t really describe what about them is delicious…maybe it’s the fact that they’re hippos...

Mari Paz started making (at Jess’s request) this delicious concoction of white rice, tomato sauce, fried egg (sunny side up), croquetas, and farinatos. THE most amazing mezcla of flavors I have ever tasted. I’ve mentioned the croquetas before, but farinato’s are special to Salamanca…they kind of remind me of a Slim Jim because they’re salty,  I wish I could describe it more, but its pretty impossible. Even Mari Paz had difficulty explaining to me what exactly I was eating-and I’m still not sure. But we had this deliciousness at least once a week for the last month we were there.

Jess and I spent a Sunday walking around Salamanca and searching for the places we had learned about in our classes.  One of which was this place:

There is a Spanish story about this garden similar to Romeo and Juliet…tragic ending for everyone involved.

This session, instead of having a soccer game (with me sliding across the gravel) our Summer 4 group had a volleyball game…but Summer 4 was the only group here so we had a competition amongst ourselves instead of against summer 3 (like in Soccer). It was a whole lot of fun! Our team was a powerhouse and was undefeated…almost. We decided to play one more game (after winning a lot and then giving another team a chance) and that  is the game we lost L But, it was still a ton of fun, and then we played more fun games like 2 on 2 and 4 on 4 until dinner.

My last week in Salamanca we went on a tour of the University of Salamanca, and I felt like I was walking through Hogwarts at first. It was very cool to see the inside of the university (its not used as a university except for very important events), and the library:
which was designed by the same architect who designed the Plaza Mayor.

This brings me up through my last week in Salamanca and into my trip to Granada to see the Alhambra, meet Meredith Leal’s friends, and check out southern Spain.

The Alhambra was incredible. I spent 3 hours walking around the Alhambra taking a bunch of pictures, and I could have spent more time there, except I was getting very hungry for lunch. Which is where I am headed shortly. Tomorrow I am visiting Meredith’s old workplace and meeting some more of her friends! I’m staying with some of her friends, and they have been more than wonderful. We watched movies and hung out last night, and this morning I made a new friend. I opened my window to let in some air and a cat came in my room. Speaking of, it has come to visit me again and is staring at me from the top stair of the staircase that leads to the loft where I’m sleeping. 

My Mini-Muffin Love Affair and the Downside of Living in Europe

Some notes about food:

My first breakfast in Salamanca, I fell in love with these mini-muffins Mari Paz (host mom) gives us. Obsessed with mini muffins is more like it-I would eat them every chance I got. However as we are approaching week SIX (tues)…I cannot keep up my mini-muffin love affair. I cannot eat another mini-muffin. I’m having the same dilemma with our cookie-crackers that I dip in my morning tea, granted the tea adds more flavor so I’ll probably be keeping my cookie-cracker habit until I leave.

When I think of foods I am missing, or craving I think vegetables. But my meals have a lot of vegetables, er rather, a lot of the same vegetable. Raw Onion. Luckily my raw onion has been spiced up with cucumber and tomato salads lately J (two of my faves). Speaking of tomatoes, I was in the plaza one night, and (at night in the plaza people from the bars come up to you and try to convince you to go to their and give you a little note card sized piece of paper…I come home with 12 every time we go out) one of these women came up to me, holds up my arm, looks at my arm, looks at me, and goes “you need to tan, eat some tomatoes and it will help you get tan”. So I’ve been eating tomatoes and I think I’m tanner…or redder.

Checkmark Bread. The most delicious bread I have ever had. I usually don’t eat my bread with my lunch or dinner…but Checkmark Bread is a different story. It’s a baguette, and it just has a check mark printed on it, not sure why, but it perfect-nice and fluffy on the inside and a flaky crust that isn’t too tough to rip apart-absolutely perfect.

There is a delicious fruit, just called "melon". It looks like a small watermelon, but is lighter green on the outside, and is green on the inside like a honeydew, but it tastes like a cantaloupe! 

I have discovered the downfall to living in Europe. At first, I loved being surrounded by two old cathedrals, and historical monuments, and living in a really old city…however…the cathedrals are distracting. I was walking home from school and looking up at the cathedrals when I kicked a rock. And there was a tour bus amount of people who saw me do it.

Summer 2 is officially gone, it really set in this week that Salamanca simply IS NOT the same without them here.

Things in Salamanca are very different than the US...the US is definitely more service oriented, where as here I am helped when its convenient for the people working. Not everyone is like that, but in some major stores and some smaller little souvenir tiendas that has been the case. 

There is a market on Sundays called El Rastro (sp?) which my roomate and I went to this last weekend. It was quite the experience. It is a huge parking lot with tent after tent after tent of vendor set up selling purses, shirts, shoes, jewelry, more purses and different kinds of shirts and pants and everything you can imagine. On the pavement in the middle of the aisle of El Rastro, there are people selling DVDs...the DVD's are laying out on a blanket and you have to walk around, and some (most) of these DVDs appeared to be pirated...example: Knight and Day is still in theater and I could have bought it last weekend. 

This weekend we are in Aveiro, Portugal, nicknamed the “Little Venice” because of its canals and gondolas. It is a free weekend for our group so we are hitting the beach! The water is supposed to be freezing cold so I’ll probably just be in the sand. Hopefully I’ll get my pictures up SOON!!

Stealing free wee-fee from Mc'donalds

It has been a very busy week and few days over here.  Last Thursday we went out with our intercambio partner, Helena, to go “tapa-hopping” for dinner. Tapas are amazing, you can go from restaurant to restaurant and get one tapa at each place for a euro or two. After dinner, Jess and I rushed home (rush is an exaggeration, after soccer the day before, I was waddling/shuffling) to pack for our weekend vacation/Girl’s Weekend in San Sebastian.

The train ride was eventful…I slept for the 6 hour trip.

We arrived in San Sebastian at 6:30am, it was nice and rainy while we waited for the cabs to start running at 7. We got to our hostel and were incredibly surprised to find out our hostel was in someone’s apartment. They had 3 rooms with 6-8 beds in each (bunk beds), but since we were so early, there were still people in our room, so we spent a couple hours sleeping in the living room with our bags.

After getting settled in our room, we walked around San Sebastian, shopped, and explored the city before making it an early night. Saturday was BEAUTIFUL so we all went to the beach. Great day at  the beach J Interesting, as the tide came in, a ton of red seaweed came in with it. A couple of girls and I walked up the mountain to the giant statue of Jesus, and from there, we could see the red seaweed that came in with the tide-it had turned the water completely red.

We found a great bocadillo place-I ended up eating there Saturday and going back Sunday to get a bocadillo for the train ride back to Salamanca. The train ride back was interesting-a two year old started talking to one of the girls from our trip and I, and she was adorable!

Monday it was back to class, and then studying for exams on Tuesday and Wednesday. So, nothing too exciting.

Tuesday night we were taken out for dinner (our entire Summer Two group) by the ISA staff here for our “Last Supper”.

Thursday night was our last night out with Summer 2 L And then Friday we went for churros…but the churro machine was broken, however the chocolate café is amazing so we stayed anyway. Saturday was spent mourning the loss of Summer Two and sleeping. The Summer 4 group is showing up tomorrow, and Jess and I will meet them Monday J

Rodrigo makes it rain

Friday night. Oh Friday. Our group met under the reloj (clock) in the Plaza Mayor at 1:30am. A.M. Our goal was to stay out until 6am so we could we go to a little churro con chocolate hole in the wall here in Salamanca, that we were told was something we needed to try. It was definitely worth it—I LOVE churros con chocolate. So Friday night has turned into Saturday, and in the late afternoon we met with one of our Intercambio partners, Ana, to take a bus about 25 minutes out of Salamanca into the suburbs of Salamanca to our other Intercambio partner’s (Ana’s cousin), Helena’s house to go swimming.

Her housing complex-suburb-thing has a private pool so we got to splash (salpicar) and swim (nadar) and work on Spanish (and English for our Intercambios) :) This experience was amazing! We got out of the pool, and Helena’s family had made us an empanada (jamón y queso), la tortilla español (delicious Spanish food-kind of like an omelette with sliced potato and onion), and then we made ice cream sandwiches out of a chocolate ice cream brick (not like our square gallons from Kroger… it was more of a log of chocolate ice cream) and wafer cracker-cookies. Seeing the suburbs after living in the city of Salamanca was increíble, seeing a house instead of an apartment was a nice change, as well as seeing another part of Salamanca that none of knew really existed.

This last Sunday we had an excursion to Segovia! We saw the aqueduct and the restaurant Candidio that has the famous roasted pig that is cut with a plate. I learned a lot and saw a lot in Segovia that I had never seen before, and it was incredibly interesting! I also met another Chi Omega from another school in the states! It was an exciting in Segovia. Since we were already near/in/by Segovia, we traveled to The Gardens of La Granja. It was a beautiful, gianormous garden where we were able to relax after a day of sightseeing and tours. We had one final tour of the day, and that was the Fountain Tour, in the gardens. What we didn’t know was that the fountains (the first, second, and fourth fountains we saw) start spraying water so the audience (i.e. all of us) get soaking wet (this relates to the title, Rodrigo makes it rain. We asked for rain, and he said in about an hour, it would rain...and an hour later we were drenched from the fountains)!! It was a really nice surprise, though, because it was 90+ degrees and we had been walking in the sun literally all day (11am-4pm, and that was pre-visiting the gardens).

Some fun things here in Salamanca:

It is incredibly clean! Every night people power-wash the streets and some sidewalks. Every morning, shop owners clean their stores, windows, signs, and the sidewalk in front of their shop. The city has vacuum-trucks/street sweepers out EVERY night cleaning up the city. I have never seen anything like this (except in other cities here in Spain).

Pringles. More or less the same, except we have “ham (jamón) Pringles”, and “Pringles” is printed “Pringooooools”. We have been assuming its for the Copa Mundial (World Cup) but we really have no idea why.

Everytime I have gone to El Arbol (the supermercado-supermarket-closest to our house) to buy a chocolate bar or some sort of little treat, I manage to buy little kid chocolate or cookie snacks. Literally for little kids, I had a chocolate bar called “Jungly” that had animal faces on it, and came with animal punch-out cards. BUT, they are delicious little kid snacks J

I have started reading Harry Potter 2, in Spanish-it is just as good in Spanish (so far).

We had a Summer 2 (my group studying here in Salamanca) vs Summer 3 (the other group) soccer game today (Wednesday)! It was a lot of fun, and I actually played soccer for the entire game-an hour and half of sprinting around a soccer “field”.  It wasn’t an actual field, there was a nice grassy field, but we used the gravel one…so of course I managed to completely bite it-sliding on my hip, onto my front, and somehow ending up on my back before my momentum finally gave out and I stopped sliding across the “field”. We are planning a second game for next week…hopefully we will win this next one!!

"Let's Get This Bus on the Water" (headed to Santander) and other adventures

Here is a look at my average day during the week:
8:12am: alarm goes off…hit snooze…get laughed at by roommate (Jess)

8:24am: BREAKFAST! In reality, it is not nearly as exciting as I make it seem by using all caps. Breakfast consists of a cup of tea, a mini muffin (delicious), and A LOT of cookie-cracker things that I dip in my tea.

8:35am: Jess and I leave for school.

Riveting so far, I know J

9-11am: Grammar class, with a ten-minute break

11:05-12:05pm: A Contemporary History of España

12:10-1:10pm: Spanish Art History (last class of the day)

at this point, I go to the ISA office to use wifi (here it’s pronounced “wee-fee”) and Skype/email/facebook/look up words I didn’t know in class for about 40 minutes while I wait for Jess to finish her last class (she has class until 2:15)

2:15pm: We embark on the trek that is our “walk” home. More like our daily climb up Mt Everest.

2:35pm: We (usually) make it to the top of Mt Everest in the 90 degree heat in decent shape, and get ready for lunch with Mari Paz (our host mom).

3:05pm: Lunch is finished, and my siesta begins J my FAVORITE part of the day! We eat so much during lunch that the siesta really isn’t a choice…I have to sleep off that meal.

(Side note: my times are really specific…but every day at this exact time these things take place. Lunch really does end at 3:05 every day)

The rest of my day is a lot more flexible than my morning and everyday things are at different times (except dinner)…

Sometime between 3:30 and 6pm: I wake up from my food coma, and find something to do (homework, going to the park, going shopping, having a meeting with our ISA group, going out for the Spain games) and head out to go do whatever I have decided on for the day, and do that until 9pm.

9pm: Begin the Mini Back Packing trip back home for dinner.

9:30-10pm: Dinner.

10pm +: Random choice activities…usually relaxing, doing homework, watching a movie, reading…on the weekends I go out with my friends in our group, and sometimes during the week.

1:30-2am: Go to bed.

So, that is my typical day here in Salamanca J

            This last weekend, we went to Santander (about a 5 hour bus ride north of Salamanca) to have a relaxing weekend at the beach! Santander was an incredibly wonderful break in weather--we’ve been having quite the heat wave in Salamanca, and Santander was cool and breezy! And our hotel had air conditioning! My weekend was pretty much spent entirely at the beach, and eating out with people from the group. Santander is absolutely gorgeous! Normally they have cloudy, rainy days, and it was cloudy and rainy Friday as we arrived and went out. However, Saturday, it was SUNNY and the skies were CLEAR and BLUE! Then Sunday as we were rolling out, it was once again cloudy, gray, and ready to rain.

            On the drive back to Salamanca we stopped in two small cities, Comillas and Santillana del Mar. In Comillas (where we stopped for lunch), we arrived at the same time as the bagpipe parade (not even kidding). I still don’t know what the parade was for…but for the next hour and a half we could the bagpipe parade walking around the city. In Santillana del Mar (one of the oldest medieval cities in Spain), we had sobao y leche. Sobao is a bread-like-poundcake thing, and the leche was the freshest milk that has ever crossed my path. 

            Sunday night, we arrived back in Salamanca at about 7:30 and hiked up to our house with our luggage from the weekend, sped ate dinner, and headed to the Plaza Mayor for the World Cup finals, which as everyone knows (or should know), la ROJA (España) won!!! The Plaza EXPLODED with celebration and excitement! Literally exploded—people set off this bomb sounding things…an hour after España won people were still setting off this bomb things. There was an unofficial parade of people in the plaza with a person pretending to be a drum major marching around with a bass drum, and an incredibly long flag with a hundred people holding the sides and waving it. Everyone was singing and yelling and dancing and running around and taking pictures. Complete chaos! Being in España when Spain has been AMAZING! Monday night in Madrid there was a huge celebration for the team that I watched on TV with my host mom (the celebration really started when the team got on their plane to come home, and will be going on for who knows how long). The World Cup experience has simply been INCREÍBLE J

            Monday afternoon I went on a tour of the two cathedrals in Salamanca. Salamanca is the only city in Europe with TWO cathedrals…the new cathedral, built in the 16^th century (the last gothic style cathedral built in the time period), and the old cathedral, which was built in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. We climbed a tower in the cathedral and were rewarded with an INCREDIBLE view of Salamanca! There is also a tower in the cathedral with a roof style that is only on two other towers in the world—one in Turkey and I don’t remember where the third tower is. Also, a lot of buildings in Salamanca have a crack in the walls that just looks like a large space between the stones of the building. This crack was caused by an earthquake in Portugal (in a city about 8 hours away by bus) that was so large Salamanca felt it and the cathedral and other building all have cracks from this earthquake, but I don’t think any of these big buildings actually fell-I know the cathedrals didn’t fall, but homes were destroyed. Every year on the anniversary of this earthquake, a person from a certain family (for a hundred years, I think, this has been done) climbs the bell tower of the cathedral without ropes or harnesses and rings the bells in memory of the earthquake and the people who lost lives and homes.

             Monday night was also the night we met our intercambios partners. For intercambios we talk to a native Spaniard for a while in Spanish to practice our Spanish, and then we switch and talk in English so they can practice their English. My intercambios partner’s name is Helena and she is my age and starting college in the fall. She is going to study English and something else, I can’t remember what at the moment. We are meeting up again tomorrow (Thursday) to hang out and get to know each other better and practice practice practice our languages. There is another girl (Candice) from my ISA group studying Spanish here who is also partners with Helena, so we are having a lot of fun making mistakes and trying to understand each other. I also had my first “café con leche” today, it was good…but I am not much of a coffee person. I will probably try it a few more times before I leave, but I don’t think I’m going to become a coffee drinker.

            Last night, Tuesday, we went to see a Flamenco show! It was interesting to watch, the dances became more and more complicated as the show went on. There was also a guitar player and a woman who sang Flamenco songs in between dances while the Flamenco dancers got changed and ready for the next part. One dance used Pachabel’s Canon with a Flamenco twist to it. After Flamenco, Jess and I went out with people from the group and got free shirts and had a great time…until we realized it was 2 in the morning and we still had to hike home!

            Today is decently uneventful, had class, had lunch, writing this during my siesta time, and shopping/hanging out with Candice (a girl from the program, also partners with Helena for intercambios) later…post siesta J

I am LOVING being in Salamanca and I am learning so much-about my city, about Spain, and (my whole reason for being here) a lot more Spanish! Everyday I am learning at least of page of new words and phrases just from talking to my host mom, or sitting in my history and art history class! 

Las pulgas están debajo de mi nariz! The fleas are right underneath my nose!

          Interesting fact, in Spain they don’t say “it was right under my nose”. I found this out by saying something along those lines when I was looking for a napkin in the kitchen. Instead they say “in front of my eyes". One of the many miscommunications/weird things I’ve accidently said while trying to say something else … there have been MANY mistakes… quite embarrassing ones at that… it is only Día 6!           

            In the 6 días that I’ve been here, we have done SO much. I arrived in Madrid and immediately met my group and we took a tour of el Prado (incredibly famous art museum in Madrid). El Prado was conveniently across the street from our hotel. Our tour guide in el Prado gave the tour in a Spaniglish mezcla (mix), heavy on the Spanish. I was incredibly excited to realize that I could follow along with the tour guide in Spanish. 

After el Prado, we went to the Palacio Real. ¡Qué bonita el Palacio Real! The Palacio is huge, hundreds of rooms and an amazing collection of everything imaginable, por ejemplo, they have 5 Stradivarious (sp?) instruments (a mix of violins, violas, and a small cello looking thing).

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            While the tours were interesting and I learned a lot, the real fun started around 11:30pm when a small number of people from our group and a couple of people from the ISA Málaga group went to a Chocolatería for chocolate and churros J Deliciosos! We saw the Madrid nightlife coming to life as we walked home around 1am.

            The next day, we traveled to Toledo, one of my favorite cities in Spain (be forewarned…I saw this about every  city in Spain). Our tour guide had a great sense of humor, and he also gave our tour almost entirely in Spanish. Some highlights from the tour of “the city of anti-cholesterol” (Toledo)

(there is a freakishly large number of hills in this city) were the “Priest Factory” (a monastery), 

el monastario de Isabel la católica,

 el zocodero, y lunchtime.

            For lunch we had “pulgas”…translation…fleas! No, we didn’t eat actual fleas J Pulgas are sandwiches that are about half the size of a normal sandwich (sandwiches here are made on a baguette, and you get the entire baguette).  We met up again with the ISA Málaga people that we went to the Chocolatería with us later that day for dinner at the hotel.  In Toledo, I found out I that I have a roommate in Salamanca!

            The following day (day 3), we were headed to Salamanca (finalmente) with a short stop in Ávila. Ávila is (again) my favorite city in España. We heard the history of Ávila, and then had a couple hours of free time to find lunch, and then we were off to Salamanca! PS, Ávila has a lot of birds… we felt like we were in the movie “The Birds”.

            LLegamos a SALAMANCA!!! We arrived in SALAMANCA!!! Our host mom met us at the bus stop and took us to her apartamento. Our room is incredibly tiny, but we’re doing alright sharing it. We have about a foot of space between our beds, there is a hanging light I keep hitting my head on, and we have to move a little table in order to open the closet door all the way, but it’s pretty comfy J I had plenty of room for all of the things I packed!

            Salamanca is an amazing city! La Plaza Mayor is the prettiest in Spain, at night when it isall  lit up… I can’t even describe how it looks! This is where watched the Spain v Portugal game the other night, and where we meet for meetings with ISA. If you are going to meet someone in Salamanca, you say you will meet at (whatever time) in La Plaza Mayor, and everyone knows that means under the clock in the Plaza. ALWAYS.

            My roommate and I have gotten lost a few times in the 3 days we’ve been in Salamanca… however, getting lost doesn’t seem to be helping us discover the city… our program director tried to give us directions to a mailbox today and told us to go past one of the university buildings…. We knew what the building looked like… and what was around it, but we were so turned around when we were lost earlier that day we had no idea how to get back to that part of the ciudad. Luckily, my roommate and I are both here for two months (instead of one like the rest of our grupo), so we have PLENTY of time to figure this city out J

            Today (day 6) at dinner, (by the way, Mari Paz, my host mom is an amazing cook!) we had las albondigas (meatballs) so, Dad, I of course told  story of  “¿Dónde están las albondigas?” Mari Paz, my roommate, and I had a very long, interesting and fun conversation about food today after dinner-I learned a lot of new vocab, and Mari Paz learned about all of our weird eating habits, and foods that we love in the EEUU (US). It is so great t o be able to have a conversation entirely in Spanish! I love talking with Mari Paz, I learn how to say phrases and a ton of new words every day (usually having to do with food, go figure!).

Also, the "dread-mullet" is HUGE here! It's like a mullet, shaved on the top, adn then dreads down the back...its a little...odd :)

¡Hasta luego!