I am a terrible blogger.

Or maybe it's just that I watch shows I Tivo or Facebook aimlessly instead of updating my blog.

Anyway. So I got through 4 midterms and 4 papers...very exciting (not). Dad and I had a wonderful weekend in Salamanca, and a day in Burgos. I ordered lots of plain food for him and he said "No hablo espanol" a lot. :)

I've also been traveling a lot around Spain - my two friends, Maddie and Courtney, and I went to Valencia a few weeks ago and to Santiago de Compostela this past weekend. The weekend after this one, we're probably heading to Cordoba as well, and then I'm going to Barcelona (and a Barca football game!) with Maddie and our friend Jillian my last weekend in Spain. This weekend I'm heading to Madrid to meet up with Emily, who's flying in from Scotland!! :) Very exciting.

Other than that, hmm. I've had a few intercambios, where I get together with Spanish students studying English so they can practice their English and I can work on my Spanish. I think that my conversation skills are definitely improving, even though they definitely improved at a slower rate than my comprehension haha. But it's not nearly as much of an effort to string together a sentence and conjugate verbs anymore (even though half the time I'm probably still doing it wrong).

Salamanca's already all decorated for Christmas - they don't have Thanksgiving here so as soon as Halloween was over, bam! There's garland hanging across the streets, and all the shop windows have Christmas displays. And I thought the U.S. started early, jeez. They also are way into roasted chestnuts here, so every time I walk down a street at night, I smell them and think of NYC streets at Christmas (okay, so that usually actually makes me more homesick, but it's still a nice smell, objectively). I'm kind of sad I'm going to miss Thanksgiving at home, but IES is giving us a big Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant here, and all our professors and everything are coming, so that'll be nice. They also gave us a dinner a couple of weeks ago where we got to help make the food - the chef (who's actually pretty renowned) let us make our own pan con tomate appetizer, served us his paella valenciana, and then let us fire our own creme brulee (although it's called crema catalana here). That was pretty awesome (and delicious).

Also I am addicted to a) tortilla de patata and b) chocolate con churros. I'd better figure out how to make / procure these so that when I have cravings in the States (when, not if, haha) I'll be able to satisfy them. I do enjoy the Spanish cuisine, haha.

Anyway. I've got class soon, so I've gotta go. Hopefully there's people who haven't given up on me and still check this, haha. Miss you and love you. :)

Lo siento.

I have been absolutely terrible at blogging lately, I'm sorry. In my defense:
a) I don't think that many people actually read this anyway. And those of you that would, well, I talk to you all the time so you know what's going on in my life.
b) I had three midterms this week and I have three papers due next week.
c) I've actually been keeping myself really busy, which has been excellent.

Plus Dad is in Spain this weekend! He gets in on the train in about four hours, so I'm way excited to see him.

I will try to make a more substantive update in the near future, if only for the sake of my own guilt about not doing it haha. Love you and miss you!!

Tuesday morning / in the dark (thank you, Michelle Branch)

A brief musing on Spaniards that I've been meaning to write here for a long time.

So, in case you were wondering, the 80s are alive and well in Spain. What do I mean? Oh my God, the MULLETS. I honestly thought that it was common knowledge that that hairstyle should never be resurrected, but apparently Spain doesn't agree. Dreadlocks are also a popular choice, as are tiny braids that grow out of regular crew cuts (this is all still guys, by the way). Mohawks? Yes. And let's not forget that all of these can be coupled with obscene amounts of hair gel - I don't understand why I can't find gel when these guys seem to be using it by the bottleful.

The little old Spanish couples are really cute. You see a lot more older people walking around the streets or just sitting on benches people-watching here (my Spanish prof says it's because nursing homes and the like are less common, and older people stay with their kids or on their own). But all of the old couples always walk around arm in arm, which is adorable. And they're always dressed up, too, the men in jackets and the women in little skirt suits.

Thirdly, "PDA" is certainly not taboo here. It was actually one of the points they included in our culture shock lecture during orientation because so many of the American students are taken aback by it. College-age couples walk around with their hands on each other's butts, make out on street corners (or, apparently, at tables in restaurants right behind other diners - that happened to my friend), and are just in general very out there with their affection. Which isn't a good or a bad thing, just different / takes some getting used to. But it's so funny to see the American students' reactions as opposed to the Spaniards who just totally ignore it (including the little kids, whereas in the U.S. kids would be like "MOMMY LOOK AT THAT!" haha).

I feel like I had more to say on the topic of Spaniards in general (oh, the two kisses on the cheek thing isn't a stereotype - they do that all the time. Even when you meet somebody for the first time), but I've got to have breakfast and get to class. Hope you're all doing well. Miss you and love you.

It's been awhile.

Hey all...

I know it's been a long time since I last updated, stuff has been busy. I was in Paris for the long weekend, which was absolutely incredible. I'm in the process of uploading photos - those of you who get my Snapfish photos should already have them, and if Facebook weren't being absolutely infuriating and only letting me upload two photos at a time, those would be up too.

It was so great...we saw all of the sights - the Eiffel Tower, a visit during the day and up to the top at night (which I'd never done - SO MUCH better at night, fyi), the top of the Arc d'Triomph, the Louvre, Notre Dame, St. Denis, a day trip to Normandy, walking along the Seine, the Jardines Tuileries...gah! Haha, and it was so great to see Charlie and Shika and hear about Nova and Paris and everything that's happening with them. Definitely the most fun I've had in a very very long time.

Classes are going along here...I just realized yesterday that my midterms start next week, so I should probably start studying those. These are the first actual "exam" midterms I'm going to have had in forever - I have to go back to the memorizing thing, when I've gotten so used to papers! So hopefully those go well.

I'm hoping that I'll be going on a trip to the north of Spain this weekend with two of my friends here, if we can figure out transportation. Buses are proving to be difficult to come by. I went to an organ concert at the old University with one of those girls last night, which was really awesome as well. And I finally bought myself a USAL sweatshirt, haha - it's pink. Did anyone pass out from shock?

Anyway. I'll probably give up on Facebook uploading soon (it's taken me two hours to upload 66 pictures, when I can usually upload 120 in 10 minutes or less) and head over to Spanish class. Then back home for lunch, and probably going to meet Whitney's mom and stepdad (they're here visiting and then they're all going to Germany this weekend). One class in the afternoon, and I might go to one of the Latin dance clubs here tonight, El Sabor. Depending on whether I'm getting on a bus at dawn, haha.

Love you and miss you all - comments or emails or other forms of saying hi would most definitely be appreciated.

Ah, an Internet cafe.

It had to happen sometime...here I am in an Internet cafe in the train station in Salamanca. My wireless is being irritating again at home (the router needs to be reset but it´s in my host brother´s room) so I took a field trip. But when I asked how much it cost to use the Internet here, I didn´t realize that the girl would assume I meant one of their computers, not the wifi. So I would up paying 1.50 euro to use a computer for half an hour when I have my laptop in my backpack. Stuuuupid. Oh well.

Anyway. This weekend has been largely uneventful. I didn´t travel anywhere, so I´ve just been trying to find ways to entertain myself in Salamanca. Not so easy. Friday I still felt really sick, so I didn´t do much during the day, but I went out to dinner with my friend Maddie that night. We found this really amazing Italian place near one of our class buildings, and had farfalle with four-cheese sauce...delicious. Aaand they had ice cream filled crepes for dessert, yum. :)

The next day I did some homework in the morning, then went on a horseback riding excursion with IES in the afternoon. They bussed us to a ranch about 40 minutes outside the city. I originally wasn´t going to ride, but then I decided I didn´t want to miss out on the opportunity to say that I went horseback riding through the Spanish countryside, even though I´ve only been riding once before and I´m not a huge fan of the horses, haha. It ended up being not so bad, except for the fact that my horse just wanted to eat the ENTIRE time, and kept veering off to the side of the trail to munch on the weeds, no matter how many times I "Vamos"d. Plus I´m really sore today, haha, but it was a good time anyway.

Then last night I went and saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Maddie and another girl from IES, Kat. It was really good (if a little strange, maybe that´s a Woody Allen thing), and I was proud that I understood almost everything even though it was all in Spanish. So that was a good time! I also Skyped with the lovely ladies of Gallen 103, which was fantastic, and found out that I´m not going to have to miss out on seeing Michelle for a year after all! Yay. :)

And now my money is about to run out, so I have to go. I´m meeting Katie for tea in about an hour, so that´ll be nice, and I´ll probably try to get some homework done tonight. Then back to class tomorrow! Hope all is well, miss and love you. :)

More Spanish adventures.

I've already had the laundry adventure, the tech zone adventure, the ongoing adventure that is food...what else could there be?

Oh yeah. The doctor.

So I've been feeling not so well since we got back from Sevilla and Granada this Sunday (it was fabulous, but more about that if I have time) - kind of like a cold was coming on, but I was hoping it wouldn't get any worse. Unfortunately not so. As the week progressed, my throat started to hurt, I got more and more congested, and I developed a cough. Ever since I had pneumonia back in March I've been nervous about coming down with it again, so I decided to use my time between classes today to go to Salamanca Salud, one of the health centers here.

I had enough trouble finding the place, since it's on one of those tiny streets that are so popular in Spain that isn't on any of the maps. So I asked about six different people for directions before I finally found it...lovely. I wound up having to wait almost an hour, since I didn't have an appointment and it's basically the equivalent of a clinic, I think. I finally got to see the doctor, and I am ridiculously proud of myself for being able to relate all of my symptoms in Spanish, as well as understand everything he asked/told me. It's things like that, exchanges with a doctor or a random person on the street that go well, that I take as my day-to-day victories here, haha.

Turns out I apparently have "traqueítis," or trachea-itis, to English-ize it, which is not, thankfully, in my lungs and therefore is not dangerous post-pneumonia. And he prescribed me three - count 'em, three! - antibiotics to take for the next week. Yesss for doctors that actually give meds. So I picked those up at the pharmacy on the way home from class, and I started them with my lunch. Yay for the road to recovery.

That's probably about all I have time for right now. My religion class is taking a field trip to the cemetery in Salamanca to study the way Spanish culture views death and the afterlife (I promise, it's not as morbid as it sounds), and according to Mari it's a 40 minute walk from my house. Funnnn. Just what I need - more walking today (I had to come all the way back from class to get my passport before I went to the doctor's, and then all the way back almost to where I had class to the office). Anyway. Hope all is well at home, love and miss you all. :)

Just a PSA.

I, Tara Powers, ate octopus for lunch this afternoon.