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!