It's been a week?

It's hard to believe I've only been here a little more than a week now. I feel like I've been here forever. I'm pretty used to the city now and how we get places, but I'm sure there is a lot I still haven't discovered. Yesterday was the first day of a 2 week long festival happening in Salamanca, and we saw an amazing fireworks display and watched a little bit of a concert last night. The finale of the fireworks was probably the best one I had ever seen, it lit up the entire sky.

Today we didn't have classes because of the festival, so in the morning me and the two girls I live with walked to the Plaza and met up with some other people in our group. We went to a chocolate shop and had churros and chocolate. For those of you who don't know, churros are similar to fried dough, but they are long strips of dough, often dipped in chocolate. I didn't get a picture of the churros, but I took some other pictures at that place.

Later in the day we tried to go find a football (soccer) game that was happening this afternoon, but we couldn't find where it was, so we just ended up taking a long walk along the river taking pictures. Here are a selection:

I already posted a picture or two of this cathedral, but I just can't get enough of it. Whenever I see it from a new angle I just have to take a picture. It's so beautiful, and it's visible from many parts of the city.

A cool old bridge we walked across.

Close up of the very top of the cathedral.

I'm not sure what this picture is but the glass on the front is gorgeous so I took a picture.

The view along the river was really nice, and this is one of my favorite pictures of it. I love how the bridge, water, trees and sky all go together.

Then later in the day there were lots of activities and entertainment throughout the center of the city for the festival. I had to go home for dinner soon after many of the things started so I didn't get to see much but I did see a few:

A street performer entertaining people before the main concert started in the Plaza. He was pretty funny and had a bunch of different skills to showcase. In this picture he is telling the crowd that the last part of his show would be him juggling a ball, a knife and a chainsaw, but I left before I got to see him do it.

Musicians and a musician showcasing flamenco. Also didn't get to stay for the whole thing, and I didn't get any good pictures of the dancing, but it was pretty cool.

This is probably going to be a long post, so I guess that's it for now. I'll post again when I have something else exciting to talk about. :)

Here are some more pictures of my trip so far. Yesterday, me and my two housemates went wandering around the city and took lots of pictures and probably looked completely like tourists, but we didn't care. I took so many pictures that it would take forever to post all of them but here is a sampling of the best ones. Comments for each one are underneath, just thought I would specify in case it's confusing. 

 

Me sitting in the Plaza Mayor for a very tourist-looking picture.

 

A gorgeous church we saw on our walk. I took so many pictures of it that I would bore everyone if I put all of them up. 

 

Another picture of the church, this time an attempt at an artistic one with flowers in the front.

 

Two cute little boys that were dancing to music that was playing. I had to take a picture.

 

Another touristy picture.

  

A courtyard that is part of my school. The buildings here are all really beautiful.

 

Not sure if you can see it very well, but this is a picture of a frog on top of a skull that is on the building in the previous picture. The story to go along with it is that once you find the frog (it's very hard to find if you don't know where to look), it's lucky and you can make a wish. A lot of the tourist shops have things you can buy that have to do with the lucky frog, like shirts, mugs, little frog toys, and other things like that. 

 

A building at my school. I decided to take a picture since it's the only place I could find a sign that said the full name.

  

Me and the sign.

 

I love the cars here! They are all so little and cute. This is an especially cute one that I saw while I was walking down the road and just had to take a picture. Me in the picture gives you an idea of how small it actually is. I've also seem lots of Smart Cars, which I love. They are much more common here, which makes sense because they don't have to worry about huge SUVs plowing them over like in the U.S. 

 

This is the door to my apartment building. Sorry the next few pictures aren't very good, i took them at night since it was the only time I remembered.

 

My street.

 

Inside entrance to the building.

 

 

Bathroom the 3 of us share.

 

Living room/dining room, with my housemate Jessica in the picture.

 

A slightly better picture of my bedroom.

I want to take pictures of food, but so far I've been forgetting. I especially want to take one of what my host mother gives us for breakfast every morning because it's really cute. We have toast with butter and jelly, some cookie/cracker things, a muffin, and juice or coffee, and it's all nicely arranged on a tray for each of us when we get to the kitchen. We eat lunch and dinner in the dining room, and we've had a variety of different things. Usually we start with soup or pasta, then have salad, and then usually a meat course. Today we had paella which was awesome. For dessert we have yogurt, flan or fruit. One aspect of the meals that is taking a while to get used to is how far apart they are. We eat breakfast at 8:00, and lunch isn't until 2:30. Then we don't have dinner until usually 9:30. I'm used to meals being closer together, and at home I snack a lot throughout the day, so here every time a meal comes around I'm really hungry and end up eating everything she gives me. Our host mother serves us everything at meals, and refills our water when we need it and makes sure we have the next course as soon as we're done with the previous one. Even when we offer to help her bring the dishes to the kitchen or something she says no, no, it's fine. We also get our clothes washed once a week and she makes our beds everyday. I'm so used to doing my own laundry that it'll probably be a little weird. I just hope I'm not spoiled when I get back :). 

Classes, etc.

Yesterday was the first day of classes. On Wednesday we took a placement test to determine our level. We take the classes we're in now, which are a grammar class and a conversation and writing class, for the first 3 weeks of the semester and then we start the regular term and take 4 or 5 classes each. I can't remember exactly what classes I signed up for, but I now one is Spanish literature, one if Spanish history and one is Spanish cinema. I like my classes so far, even though today was only second day, and my teachers are good too. I think I was placed into exactly the right level so the work is a good level for me.

Yesterday was a really fun day because after classes I went shopping with a few other girls and for almost the entire afternoon we spoke almost entirely in Spanish. It was a great confidence booster that it's actually possible for me to communicate in Spanish. Lots of time when we're together with the whole group, we mostly speak English which I want to try to stop doing as much because it makes us stand out more (not that our accents don't stand out anyway) and because the more we speak to each other in Spanish the faster we'll become really comfortable with it. During our shopping trip I bought some postcards of Madrid and a pair of really pretty earrings from a nice guy that was selling jewelry in the corner of the plaza. He asked us to go to a store down the road and buy him some bottles of water, so he gave us money to buy it and we said we would. Then when we got back I decided to buy the earrings and he gave me a discount because we got the water for him. 

I'm starting to get to know the other people in the program more which is nice, especially the two girls I live with. I already knew a bunch of the people who are from my school, but it's fun to spend time with them outside of classes, which is how we mostly know each other from school. Having people in the house with me is definitely helping me settle in. There are certain things about being here that I'm still getting used to, like wearing slippers all the time in the house because bare feet or socks in the house is frowned upon here. I love being barefoot inside so it's taking some getting used to.

Another thing that's cool here is the cars. Most of them are really small and even the companies that we know in the U.S. have different models of cars that I've never seen or heard of before. There are also several common companies that I don't recognize at all. I've also seen several Smart Cars. :)

Well, I guess I should stop for now. I felt like I had so much I wanted to write about but now I can't remember it all. I will try to add pictures if I can figure out how.

Bienvenidos a España!

Bienvenidos/Welcome to my new blog about my Spain trip. I decided to start it so that I can keep people updated even without facebook. For now I'm just going to post what I originally posted on facebook, but there will be more to come soon.

Hola! I'm in Spain! After many long hours travelling I'm now at my homestay and settling in. I figured since I have some downtime I would update you all on what has happened so far, even though it's only my first day here. First of all, I had a few flight complications, which is even more difficult in a foreign country at an airport you've never been to. My first flight out of Boston seemed like it was gonna be fine and we started leaving the gate but then we had to pull back into the gate for a "security reason." It turned out that they found someone smoking in one of the plane bathrooms and had to make him get off the plane, and then they searched a bunch of bags of people sitting around him to make sure he hadn't done anything weird. So we finally took off an hour late. I originally had a two hour layover, which was now cut down to one, which seemed fine...until I got to Heathrow and it took forever to get to the other terminal I was supposed to be at. And I had to go through security again. So I basically ran to the gate and made it just as the flight was closing, but then found out that my bag wouldn't make it on the plane so it was better to wait for the next one, which they told me was several hours later, which would mean I would miss my group's bus once I got to Madrid. I was kinda freaking out at this point, but then it turned out that I could get an earlier flight that left in about half an hour, so I basically had to run to that gate too. That flight was fine, and kinda fun cuz I got bumped up to business class since the economy class was full. :) Once I got to Madrid I had some issues finding where I was supposed to meet the group, but eventually everything worked out.Then we had a 2 hour to arrive in Salamanca, which is a beautiful city. I haven't seen much but I like what I've seen.

The weirdest thing about being here is the time difference. It was only dark for about 4 or 5 hours while I was flying, so when the sun rose, my internal clock was really confused. Other than a short, very uncomfortable nap on the bus, I haven't slept since I got up yesterday morning, which was 30 hours ago. I'm exhausted but I don't feel like sleeping cuz it's still light out. It's so weird. I'll probably go to sleep very soon after dinner.

I like my host family and the apartment I'm staying in. I have my own room which is pretty cool, and there are two other students from my program staying here who seem nice. My host mother is very nice, and really likes to talk lol. I guess that's a good thing since I'll be exposed to lots of Spanish. I also have wifi, which is really great, and that's how I'm able to write this right now.

I guess that's it for now. I'll probably post pictures soon, as soon as I take more of them. :)