Just a PSA.

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

Tengo hambreeee.

So this week has been pretty uneventful - classes and the like. I started my class at the University (the literature one), and I love it. The class is about half and half, Spanish students and international students, and there are people from literally all over the world - Luxembourg, Germany, the Czech Republic, England, France, China, Japan, Panama, Guatemala...crazy. My professor's so nice, and while she doesn't dumb the class down for the international kids (like a lot of the IES classes do), she also makes sure that we're keeping up. Plus one of the girls from IES is in the class with me (my ice cream buddy, haha), which is really nice.

This weekend we're taking an excursion with IES to Seville and Granada, in the south of Spain. We're leaving at a godawful hour - 7 am on Friday morning - and it's going to be something like a 6 or 7 hour bus ride, but I've heard those two cities are fantastic. Plus we're going to a flamenco show while we're in Granada, and having a couple of really nice lunches at the hotels where we're staying. So I'll probably have a billion more pictures when I get back, since I'm addicted to photography and all. Get excited.

That's pretty much it for now...short entry for once, haha. Hopefully we will have dinner soon - I'm still not used to this whole dinner at 10 pm thing!

Case of the Mondays.

Back in Salamanca to start another week. My 9 am classes are at their normal times this week, not like last week when they were moved to afternoon and evening, so I actually had to wake up early again (yuck). I'm sitting in Fonseca, one of the class buildings, using the wireless even though I don't have class again till 1- I didn't feel like walking all the way home and then potentially not being able to get online. (So I'm technologically dependent and lazy - a lovely combination).

I spent the weekend with a big group of IES students in San Sebastian, which is a town on the northern coast of Spain. We left Friday morning and took a 6-hour train ride through the mountains into Pais Vasco (another region of Spain; Salamanca is in Castilla y Leon). When we got there, the three other people I was rooming with and I had to wait outside our hostel for 45 minutes until the owner came to let us in - he owns two hostels so he'd been at the other one. That wasn't too fun, but we chatted with the other college students also stranded on the front steps. When we finally got let in, we headed down to the beach to watch the sunset and wade a little bit, then got dinner in an Italian (!) restaurant near our hostel. I actually had the first decent pizza there that I've had in my entire time in Spain, which was exciting (they actually used sauce, unlike the poor excuses for pizza I've had elsewhere), and the pasta wasn't half bad either.

We woke up the next morning and spent the entire day on the beach, which was fantastic. The coast was beautiful, and the waves were awesome. One of the guys here rented a surfboard and was so excited about the fact that he could surf better waves here than in the U.S. I did a lot of sunning, some swimming, and plenty of eating tortilla de patata on baguettes - que rica! And I got some lovely color, which I always enjoy (see: Bermuda trip). We all had dinner at an awesome restaurant right on the water which was relatively cheap (San Sebastian's a big tourist town, so that's a very good thing) and had fantastic cheeseburgers, believe it or not. Aaand also, they are very generous with their gelato in San Sebastian - a pequeno was HUGE! They also had about 50 different flavors, which was very exciting, and of course I took full advantage of. Breakfast was yummy both mornings too - a chocolate-filled croissant at the panaderia right down the street from our hostel.

Speaking of hostels, because I know Mom is probably thinking about this - it was really nice, not sketchy at all. The four of us had our own room, with a lock on the door, and no other roommates so we didn't have to worry too much about leaving our stuff there. I mean, obviously we still locked the door and I took my important stuff with me, but it wasn't like there were strangers sleeping in the next beds. They gave us sheets, and there were two bathrooms that all of the hostel guests shared - but nice ones, tiled, with shower stalls and everything, not like community bathrooms at school. So yes, good hostel experience.

Anyway, Saturday night I also walked down to the old Gothic cathedral with two of the other girls to take some pictures, and Sunday morning I woke up and climbed one of the hills in the city to get to the amazing lookout points and see the castle ruins at the top. Touristy stuff, but well worth it - wait until you see the pictures! Then we boarded the train for our 6-hour ride back home, which was not nearly as enjoyable as the way there. I bought the tickets for the four of us who were in the hostel, and I bought three at one time and one at another. I accidentally gave myself the odd ticket, so on the way home my ticket was for a totally different car of the train. The conductor wasn't nearly as laid-back as the one on the way out, who let me move up from the back of the same car to sit near everybody else. So one of the other guys and I were relegated to a separate train car, and my seatmate talked on her cell phone VERY loudly for the first hour and a half of the journey back, prime napping time. Sigh.

All in all, a great weekend. So now 4 days of classes, then an IES trip to Sevilla and Granada this weekend! That one should be fantastic too, if a lot of time on the bus. But now, since the battery life on my laptop sucks, I have to find an outlet before it dies. And I have to find some food before my 1 pm class, because I cannot go from 8 am to 2:30 pm without any snacking. Miss you and love you all. :)

Hola from the USAL campus

Buenos dias! Well, for you all over in America, at least. I'm sitting on a conveniently placed bench in one of the academic buildings here taking advantage of the WiFi before my Spanish grammar/language class starts at 1. The wireless in my apartment has been a little spotty in the mornings, so I've taken to bringing my laptop to class with me.

Anyway, since I last wrote things have continued to be good. The bullfight was...an interesting experience. I'm definitely glad that I went, because I feel like it's one of those things I couldn't NOT do, but once is also certainly enough. There were three toreros (bullfighters) and six different bulls - they each fought two. We were all the way up in the cheap seats (and in the direct sun, grah), but we could still see perfectly. I've already posted pictures with a good bit of description, but basically a bunch of toreros would get the bull riled up first, poking it with lances and such, before the actual torero would come out. Then there was this elaborate cat-and-mouse game, with a lot of passing and lunging and whatnot, before the torero finally just did the bull in with a sword to the spine (eek). What was terrible was when the guys on horseback would get flipped off, because the bull would inevitably go straight for the horse's underbelly and they'd fall, and you'd just hear all this clanging as the bull tried to ram through the horse's armor (all I could think of was Liz and how her love of all things equestrian would have cried out in horror). Then all the people would wave their handkerchiefs, programs, and other paper-like things to indicate their approval - sometimes, like when the torero took too long or fell himself, they wouldn't wave at all. And the president of the plaza or whatever he was awarded the prizes based on their cheers. There are three different prizes for a fight - you either get one of the bull's ears, both, or both ears and the tail. Yeeeeah.

So that was Sunday. On Monday, classes started (at least the IES ones). I was really excited and so far I haven't been disappointed. My Spanish grammar/culture profesor is really nice. His name is Javier, and he said that the thing he most wants to help us do is improve our conversational abilities so that we don't make so many of the usual errors extranjeros (foreigners) make - interchanging words like "gente" and "personas," for example, which both mean people but are used in different circumstances. We're also doing a bit with slang and cultural norms in addition to the strict grammar stuff like preterite and imperfect. My history class, History of the Spanish Republic and the Civil War, also seems really interesting. I've never really learned about that period at all, in any classes. Taking notes en espanol proved to be a bit challenging, but she also gave us a couple of photocopied pages of notes to follow along with as she lectured, so I can combine my notes with those. Today I have Regionalism and Political Intersections in Spain as well as Comparative Religions, then my university class, Introduction to the Spanish Novel, starts next Tuesday.

Last night, Whitney and I went to dinner with her dad, who's in town for the week. We went to a really nice sidewalk cafe close to Plaza Mayor, and then got some helado (ice cream!) afterwards. He was a really nice guy, very friendly and easy to talk to. So a fun night! The two of them are leaving for Madrid for the weekend tomorrow.

I might be going to San Sebastian in Pais Vasco for the weekend with a bunch of the other IES students, which would be fun. We'd take a train out on Friday morning and stay through Sunday afternoon, and it's pretty affordable which is nice (yay hostels). So I'll see how that goes.

Anyway. Off to class now. Hope everybody's doing well - love you and miss you all. :)

Lazy Sunday.

Well, not so much hahah. I've gone to church (yay St. Thomas of Villanova), been to el gimnasio, showered, and eaten a delicious lunch (chicken not pork!), so semi-productive. And we're going to see a bullfight at the Plaza de Toros tonight as part of festival week, so that should be an interesting cultural experience (hopefully not a very gory one).

So let's see, what have I been up to the past few days?

Ohh. Well, I finally did get clean clothes, though there wound up being a big laundry debacle that totally stressed me out. I've already told the story about eight times to various different people, so if you don't already know and you're that interested, just ask me haha. But they're clean, which is all that matters.

Our second dance class was quite fun as well, although I found flamenco to be a lot harder than salsa. And the fiesta we had afterwards was nice too (although for the record, Telepizza is pretty damn gross) - they had a mariachi band from the University come and sing for us, which was so cool. They wore traditional costumes and played their own guitars, and they definitely had fun with it - they brought two girls up to serenade them, and then made four of the kids from my program sing solo lines with them (in Spanish, which just made it even funnier).

I signed up for all of my classes without a problem, and those start tomorrow. As of right now (provided I don't add/drop anything, which I can do till Oct. 3), I'm taking Regionalism in Spain, History of Spain after the Civil War (both for humanities credit), Comparative Religions (theology, obviously), Advanced Spanish Grammar & Syntax I, and Introduction to the Spanish Novel (for my English major). The first four are all IES classes, meaning they're just with the other kids in my program and are taught by IES professors. The lit class is the one I'm direct enrolling in at the University, so I'll be in a class of Spanish students with a professor there. I thought about taking two University classes, but when I looked at the reading list for the lit one, I decided doing that might be a little much if I actually have to read the entirety of Don Quixote in Spanish. So yes, I'm excited and embracing my nerddom re: classes.

Friday we had our last day of intensive Spanish classes and then an IES sponsored outing at a karaoke bar here in Salamanca. That was pretty funny, since people sang not only to songs in English ("I Want It That Way," anyone? Yay for BSB throwbacks) but also tried to sing in Spanish as well. Very amusing.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Toro and Zamora, which are both about an hour north of Salamanca. In Toro we visited a bodega (which is actually the Spanish name for a vineyard/winery) and got a tour of the wine-making facilities. We also had a wine tasting and got to sample some of the red and white wines they made right on the estancia (farm or estate, I believe; the place was called Estancia Piedra). After that we went over to Zamora, which is where one of the directors of our program actually grew up, and walked around there for a bit. He showed us the historical parts - the Romanesque cathedral, the walls around the city complete with slits for the archers to shoot through, and the ruins of the old castle. We ended the day with a very unique lunch in a converted wine cellar.

Okay, I kid you not, we got off the bus and walked through what looked like a sketchy, abandoned ghost town - we did not see one person, and I half expected to see one of those tumbleweeds roll past as eagles cried in the distance. We passed by a bunch of entrances to private wine cellars, which are basically just steel doors that open onto a staircase underground and so look like bomb shelters. And then we finally got to this restaurant and we go downstairs, and voila! People! Haha. Lunch was already - a bit too much meat for my taste. The salad and bread were delicious, but then we had chorizo (I kind of liked that, reminiscent of kielbasi at Easter), what I think was supposed to be pork bacon but was actually more like grilled slabs of fat, and then ribs (pork again). Everyone (especially Whitney, who's from Texas haha) laughed at me because I'd never had ribs before and was totally unaccustomed to the idea of a hands-on method for eating them. Anyway, then they brought out dessert - ice cream bars (yay Cornetto cones) and coffee. And we thought that was it. And then the owner was like "CHUPITOS!" and brought out two bottles to every table, one of which was a NEON green liquid that looked like Kryptonite and tasted like green apple Jolly Ranchers. We were all really, really perplexed by the fact that we were being encouraged to end our meal by doing shots, but the guys at the restaurant were very excited about it haha. (I feel like they must play it up for the Americans - "Okay, the crowd from the U.S. is here! Bring out the booze!")

Oh and also, just as a fun anecdote. A bunch of us went up to use the bathroom between lunch and dessert, and after finding out that we needed a key to the stand-alone, only-slightly-more-modern-looking-than-an-outhouse bathroom structure (guess who got to run back down the stairs into the cellar and up again with the key? Hi.), opened the door to find two toilet-like structures, both without seats, neither of which had toilet paper. Or flushed. Or had soap at the sinks. So THAT was fun. This is the reason why I carry Purel with me, honestly. I'll have to figure out how to fit the Charmin To Go in my clutch, because lack of toilet paper in Spanish bathrooms seems to be a theme. Blargh.

Anyway, that's all for now. I have to go get ready for the bullfight. I think Whitney and I are going to split a taxi there because it looks like it might be kind of far away. I'm going to post pictures from Toro and Zamora on Snapfish (for those of you who don't have Facebook), and I'm sure I'll have a bunch from the bullfight too. Love you and miss you, hope everyone's well!

Miercoles...un buen dia.

So, as all of you East Coasters are just waking up, I'm getting ready for lunch and a siesta. I've already had my four hours of intesivo today, which I actually like. We do stuff like putting on skits (today my group did one where a daughter brought her boyfriend over for dinner for the first time) and having Pictionary-esque contests to work on vocab. And we have discussions about current events and articles in the newspaper here too (El Pais) that also helps us work on speaking. The stuff that we focus on is also phrases and figures of speech that are actually useful - the differences between "llevar" and "traer" (to leave and to bring), idioms, etc., as opposed to when we spent like six months at SHA talking about the environment and mechanical bees, haha.

I am FINALLY going to do laundry tomorrow. As any of you who have been talking to me know, I am literally almost out of clothing to wear. But because of all the orientation activities we have scheduled, I haven't had time to take an hour or more out of my day to go to the lavanderia and figure out how stuff works there. Tomorrow we only have to register for classes (which apparently takes 10 minutes) in addition to the morning classes, so I'll have plenty of time to go and not be stressed about having to get somewhere else. I did walk down to the lavanderia earlier though, just to talk to the guy there and make sure that they're going to let me wash my clothes myself (they have this weird thing called a tintoria here where you leave your clothes and they wash and dry them for you, not quite like a dry cleaners but sort of in the middle). Hopefully all will go well with that tomorrow, or I'm going to have to start turning clothes inside out.

Last night we had a salsa dancing class as part of our orientation activities, which was muuuuy divertida (that's "very fun," Dad). Though it was a tad difficult having the guy explaining the steps in Spanish, haha - I'm rhythmically challenged enough as it is without having to translate as I go. :-P Tonight we have another class in flamenco, and then a pizza dinner / dance party sponsored by our program at one of the clubs here (though it's at 9, so it'll probably just be us haha - los salamantinos don't come out until like midnight or 1 am).

Yesterday I met one Katie Moran for a loooovely sangria and chat date near Plaza Mayor. It was wonderful to see my twinnie, and apparently she lives less than five minutes from my house, which is very exciting. Especially with the way I've been feeling lately, it's good to know there's a friendly face nearby (even though her program is so much more awesome than mine and she's traveling every single weekend from now until forever - jealous!).

So that's pretty much the practical stuff, what I've been doing and whatnot. As far as I'm concerned...the past few days have been a lot of ups and downs. I'm enjoying Spain, yes, but at the same time I've never been the kind of person who enjoys starting over and having to make first impressions all over again with a huge group of new people. I'm also not a fan of anything that can be called "orientation," but that's besides the point haha. I guess what I mean is, I realize that it's only been a week and I shouldn't expect to feel totally comfortable yet, but I hate being in that place where you're not sure who your "people" are yet, the relationships you're going to pursue and who's going to "fit" with you, you know? I suppose I'll find my niche in time.

The kids here start school next week, so I've seen a lot of moms out with their sons and daughters talking about school supply shopping (so cute to hear about "cuadernos de matematicas" and "el primer dia de clases" - I love that my comprehension is getting better so that pieces of conversation I hear are starting to make sense). I'm pretty excited to start real classes too (yeah, I've always been a dork like that), even though my schedule is pretty packed (or will be, provided I get the classes I want).

Anyway. I might actually try to run down to the lavanderia now because it's earlier than I thought it'd be after lunch. Hopefully all goes well! (Five minutes later - juuust kidding. Forgot that literally everything closes here from 2-5 for siesta. So frustrating!)

Quick entry.

Okay, I don't have that long to write this (Whitney and I are heading out to a concert in Plaza Mayor), but I wanted to update my photo situation because I know people have been asking (those of you who aren't on Facebook [okay, just my family, haha]).

Flickr decided to be annoying and tell me I'd used up my bandwidth, so I went back to faithful Snapfish. Unfortunately this means I have to invite you by email if you want to see my albums, so leave me a comment / email me if you want me to invite you. (I already sent invites to Mom, Dad, Stella, and Auntie B.)

Buenas noches!

Pues...las tiendas en Espana estan cerradas los domingos.

For the non-Spanish speakers among us, that means that basically everything in Spain (or Salamanca, anyway) is closed on Sundays, except for a few of the smaller cafes and candy stores here and there. So even though this is the first day where I've honestly had nothing to do (I decided to skip the flea market and catch up on my sleep, since I think it happens every Sunday and I have a huuuuge sleep debt I'm still paying off), I can't actually do anything, because there's nowhere I can go. Ahh, the irony.

So anyway. Yesterday was quite fun. We got a bus to the mall (centro comercial!) for an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch - deliciousss. I, for one, was very excited to have a slightly wider array of food choices. There was even pizza! Admittedly nowhere near as good as pizza in the U.S., but it had sauce, and cheese, and tomatoes, and a crust. Good enough for me! And there was frozen yogurt for dessert!! I need to stop getting so enthusiastic about food, haha. Afterwards we shopped around the mall for a little while (stupid exchange rate) and then saw a movie - Viaje al Centro de la Tierra (that would be Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring the esteemed Brendan Fraser - true cinematic gold, I assure you). It was a good time, though, and the McFlurry has returned to my life. Alas, not the Flake McFlurry a la Spranceland '06, but they have an Oreo one with fudge here that is also quite delicious.

Whitney and I met some friends for dinner after the mall at a bar/cafe/pub place called Erasmus. It was nice to have a meal out a restaurant - it feels like so long since I've done things like that, or like riding in a car, even though it's only been a week. After dinner we hung out in a little cafe we found until everyone else came out, since we didn't feel like going home and coming all the way back.

Salamanca is crazy at night right now because this is festival week, so there are hundreds (maybe thousands? I'm bad with numbers) of people in the streets starting at 8ish and going until at least 3 (later than that, I have no authoritative evidence, haha - I'm not a true salamantina who stays out till 7). The little casetas, which I think I mentioned before, are hugely popular. They set up high tables all around where people can bring their drinks and little plates of tapas, and everybody kind of just mills around socializing and enjoying the music. I think there are also going to be bullfights in the Plaza de Toros, so hopefully I get to go see one of those this week! I have to find out what time they are, plus I couldn't figure out whether Mary told me they cost a lot of money, or nothing (you would think that would be semi-obvious, no? Hah) so we'll see.

Lunch today was seafood paella - honestly one of the most delicious things I've ever had. We also had a pork chop, but I was still too happy about the paella to care haha. And then a chocolate pudding, yum. (By the way, sorry if this totally reads as a daily catalog of my meals. However, I enjoy food.) We watched the news with lunch today too, instead of what we usually watch - either Los Simpsons (haha) or a really bad Spanish reality dating show. So that was pretty cool.

I'm in the midst of uploading some photos from the past week to Flickr.com, so you'll be able to view them here: . Right now I'm having a little trouble uploading in bulk, but I'm sure I'll figure it out soon.

Tomorrow we're taking a day trip to Segovia, which is supposed to be a fantastic city. So hopefully I will have lots of pictures to show from that trip! Then the rest of the week will just be more Spanish classes (we have our oral exam to place us in our classes for the semester on Thursday, yikes), salsa and flamenco classes two nights this week (!), and actually registering for classes. Hopefully I will find a laundromat soon, because I'm running out of clothes (yeah, and they told me, "No one ever complains that they didn't have enough clothing" in the stupid guidebook. Lies!)...

Fue vale la pena?

Hola otra vez. I feel like I always update while I'm waiting for meals, haha.

Today we had some really weird weather - it was cold in the morning, which it always is, but it didn't really warm up. It was SO windy, and in the late afternoon/evening we had rain and drizzles. It looked like it was going to thunderstorm, but it never did. I don't know how to dress for this climate! Haha. I think it's an artful system of layering I've yet to figure out.

Anyway, Spanish classes were good today. We have four more days of "intensive" classes, next Tuesday through Friday, before real classes start the following Monday. I do think my language skills are getting better, though, which is exciting - I can understand usually 85% of what my host family says to me now without having to ask them to repeat it, and I can carry on a conversation pretty decently. Hopefully it only gets better! I'd like to have a more authentic accent; some of the students in my group sound like natives when they speak and I'm way jealous.

After classes I took a fantastic siesta, and then we headed back to campus for an indoor soccer game with some of the Spanish students from the Universidad. It was actually a really good time! I haven't played soccer in forever, haha, but a lot of the other girls hadn't either (the guys were, of course, ridiculously competitive, but what else is new?). We split into four teams and had a tournament of sorts. Mine was eliminated in the first round, but it was fun to watch the championship. The Spanish guys were really nice, despite most of our ineptitude.

Lunch was actually really delicious today too! My Google searching tells me it's called Arroz Cubano, which doesn't really make sense, but hey. It was white rice with a fried egg on top, and then it had tomato sauce ladled over it. Then Felipe (my host dad) showed me how you're supposed to mix it all together rather than eating it separately the way it's served. SO good. Now if we could just get the salad to consist of something more than a bowl of plain lettuce leaves (I'm not even kidding! I think there was one day we had lettuce and tomatoes with olives together. The rest of the days it's just been a bowl of lettuce, and last night even just a bowl of tomatoes). Hopefully dinner tonight will live up to lunch, haha.

Tonight starts the week-long annual festivals in Salamanca. The feast day for la Virgen de la Vega is sometime during the week, and there's concerts, exhibitions, bullfights/runs, all sorts of things from now until next Sunday. There are also like 80-something of these little casetas all over the streets, which are basically mini-bars that are extensions of the actual bars. Each one gets a permit from the city (because you're not allowed to drink on the street by law here) to serve alcohol outside during the festivals, and they each offer a specialty, usually some kind of tapas and a drink, for like 1,85 Euro. I haven't had tapas here yet, so hopefully I get to try some of those!

Since I have to stick to my MO of only talking about food (haha), I have to take a second to gush about churros and chocolate. It's a breakfast thing here I think, but you can get them anytime. It's basically what it sounds like - a mug of hot chocolate, but thicker than in the U.S., and 4 or 5 warm churros to dip in the hot chocolate (which you then drink the rest of, naturally). Mmmmmmm. Hahah. They even have churrerias solely for the purpose of serving this. Love it.

Tomorrow and Sunday we actually don't have to get up early, which will be nice. There's a buffet lunch for us somewhere tomorrow, and then I think we're going to one of the malls nearby (well, relatively nearby, since we need a bus). Then Sunday we're taking a trip to one of the local flea markets, which should be kind of cool. And Monday is a day trip to Segovia!! I'm very excited about that; I hear it's nice. I'm sure I will have lots of pictures. :)

Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully dinner will be ready soon - even though we eat such a big meal at 2, I still can't get used to waiting until 9:30 or 10 pm for dinner. Sigh.

I'd really love to hear how people are doing. I'm still telling myself "It's only Day 5," and that it's going to take time I guess to be comfortable here and stuff. But I miss everybody, and hearing from all of you really makes my day. And thanks for all the comments and emails and stuff from the people who do read - love you and miss you!

A quick entry...

So the only reason I have time to make this entry is because I screwed up a meeting I had with one of the directors to talk about my classes - good job, Tara. Hahah, in my defense, she only sent it to me this morning while I was in class and wanted me to come in during our siesta time, so she was really banking on me getting the email (and what if I didn't have wifi?). And then I was back here working on HW and forgot that the 15 minute walk should start at 3:15 to get there by 3:30...I just blanked out. So I called her and explained that I didn't have time to get to the center before our next activity, and she just scheduled me in tomorrow (and that entire conversation was in Spanish, mind you, so go me).

Anyway, things are going pretty well (I almost typed "mas o menos bien," haha). We went out a little bit on Tuesday night, which was fun. And our "intensive" Spanish classes have started, so for four hours a day I am in class just working on language. I'm in Group B, which isn't the crazy smart group with two native speakers but also isn't the remedial one, so that's perfect.

I've had gelato twice here so far - delicious places to get it in the Plaza Mayor. I'm also in love with Carrefour, which is basically a Spanish-style Wal-mart. That's where I've been buying all my snacks, since breakfast is way early, lunch isn't till like 2:30, and dinner is at 9:30 or 10. Crazy!!

Anyway, now I've got to go...we're having a couple of talks about Spanish student life and voting from abroad, then a walking tour of the university. I think a bunch of us are going to go and see the residencias tonight, where the IES kids who aren't doing homestays are living in the dorms. Miss and love everyone - email me / leave comments and say hi. :)

Well...here I am.

Bienvenidos a Salamanca!

So it's almost 5 pm Spain time, and I've lost track of how many hours I've been up without sleeping (dozing on the plane/bus doesn't count, haha). I've also lost any conception of what meal I'm up to, since they fed me a ridiculous amount on my flight(s) and then I got a three-course lunch when I got to the apartment this afternoon.

The flight was smooth, relatively speaking. We took off on time from JFK, and wound up landing an hour early in Frankfurt. The plane was a 2-4-2 arrangement, and I was in the middle of a row of four, sandwiched between a German couple on one side and a German guy on the other. Fortspinnung! There was a connecting flight in Frankfurt to Israel, so there were at least three huuuuuge families of Orthodox Jewish people on the flight, with like eight kids each. That was fun when they were running up and down the darkened aisles in the middle of the flight, haha. When I got to Frankfurt, the airport basically wasn't open - it was only 4:30 a.m. their time, so things were kind of just starting to open up. And I had to take the air train to my terminal, but it didn't even open till 5:30. Nice. But while I was waiting I started chatting with a girl who's studying for a year in Russia - Siberia, to be exact. (And here I was thinking that Siberia was just the place where they sent the exiles, ha!) She's a junior in high school at some ritzy private school on LI, and her school's not even giving her credit for this year abroad. She has to take extra classes next year and some last year to graduate on time. Plus apparently the day of knowledge in Russia is today (they would have one of those) so school already started, but she's late because her visas didn't go through (I feel like that's probably par for the course, no?). But yeah, so she was good company to have.

I hung out in the lounge in Frankfurt for a good hour and a half or so, waiting for my connection. I unfortunately did not order a pretzel even though I was in Germany, since I was far too full of gross airplane food. And then when it was time to board, we all had to get on a bus and get shuttled out to the tarmac, where we climbed onto the Spanair flight up one of those portable sets of stairs. And I passed an Air Namibia flight and thought of Karalyn, haha. My flight to Madrid was totally uneventful as well - I slept for most of it. Thennnn came the ridiculous part. I land, get off, find baggage claim...my baggage finally comes out after half an hour, and then I can't find this "meeting point" that's been so highly touted in all my program literature. Supposedly it's right by the Cafe Ars in Terminal 1...but I'm in Terminal 2. And so it wound up that I landed at a different terminal than they anticipated, and I had to go up an escalator, then lug my two suitcases down two sets of stairs (because the elevator was broken), and down assorted corridors, before being one of the three last to reach the group 15 minutes before the bus left. And I was pouring sweat and way excited to meet people at this point, of course.

The bus ride to Salamanca was okay...two and a half hours of dozing, basically, as we drove through a whole lot of empty land to get to this little city. Aaand then I met my host fam! Mary (which is what Rosa's actual name is, apparently) and her husband Felipe, their 14 year old son Manuel, an older guy who may or may not be their son (she talks SO FAST), and their little dog Chuchi. They're all really nice, and the older guy helped us get into the secure wireless network (YES). Plussss, Mari then served us a three-course lunch of pasta with meat sauce, some kind of pork thing, and tapioca pudding as soon as we got settled. So much food. Oh my God. So there are two separate bedrooms for me and Whitney (who's AWESOME, by the way. She's such a sweetheart and I'm really excited), one big and one small. We picked out of a hat for them, because neither of us wanted to pick, and I got the small one but I don't mind. It's really cute and it's no worse than a dorm would be space-wise, when you divide it in half. So aside from the lack of any AC/fan/way of moving air around (oh boy), I'm quite content in my living quarters.

Whitney and I spent awhile in the afternoon having a this-is-my-life, let-me-show-you-all-my-photos session. So I narrated my giant photo album to her, and she did the same for me. It was fun! :) Then we just got back from an exploratory walk around the city, during which we found the gorgeous Plaza Mayor. If I admire the streetside dining in NYC, it's nothing compared to the tables as far as the eye can see in the Plaza. And did I mention the fact that there's a gelato shop on every single corner? Yeah. About that. Heeee.

So Mary's cooking dinner right now which should be ready pretty soon...Whitney and I are doing our best with the conversation, haha, but it's a lot of nodding and hoping that we actually get what's being said. Tomorrow starts the two-week long intensive orientation - I have a language placement test first thing. Joy. We have a bunch of seminars about choosing classes, and academics, culture, etc. Hopefully I'll actually be able to understand them. Gah. But I'm going to try not to worry about that right now. Or scheduling my classes. Or anything else other than the fact that I am in my homestay, that it is going passably well, and I have not gotten lost or extradited my first day here.

Adios!!