"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!