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. :)

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!)

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. :)