Some Ups and Downs

Oooh another week has passed! Time is flying by here. We've been here 3 weeks now and it already feels like forever! This is the last week of Spanish classes. Tomorrow we have our exam in gramatica, and then im not sure what we really do until Friday when classes end. This also means 1 week until we move into our apartment and 1 week until our real classes start yipeeee :)

This last few days I've had some ups and downs. Saturday was an amazing day! I woke up early and took a bus to Madrid, arriving mid day. There I met Javier, my hermano costarricense! I spent the whole day in Madrid with him: we met up in Puerta del Sol (center point), then after an overwhelming quick trip to the 5 floors of Cortes Ingles (the huge department store here) we got lunch and figured out a game plan for the day. After lunch we headed over to the Bernabeu stadium, home to the team Real Madrid. Although, Javier is really a Barcelona fan (and I couldn't really care less) it was fun touring the WHOLE stadium: the top, middle, and field, museum inside the stadium, locker rooms etc. So maybe I will have to become more of futbol fan here seeing as it is the number one sport!

We headed back towards the center after exploring the futbol city, and stopped in a funky area of Madrid I had read about having good shopping. Ofcourse I always manage to get lost somehow but after wondering the streets looking for open stores (it was still siesta, I guess) and finding a few we finally decided to head back towards the center for food. On the way back however, we found the best shopping street so it took a little longer than imagined but we found some great stuff at rebajas prices! And I must say, Javier was the best shopping companion I could have had :)

I finally got back to Salamanca that night and grabbed a taxi home to find Emily getting ready to go out. We went out for a little while and met up with our Swedish friend but still feeling groggy from my nap on the bus I decided to go home early. And of course the next day I wake up with a terrible cold... and for the last few days its just been getting worse. Not to mention the temperature has dropped below freezing in the last few days and it's said to even snow later this week! I've been taking extra long siestas and drinking lots of Oj so hopefully I'll get better soon.

I have my first intercambio tonight. That's where you find someone looking to practice the language you know (english) and that speaks the language you want to learn (spanish) and you get together at a cafe or somewhere and sort of tutor/practice with each other. I'll have to lay off my nyquil until after so I won't be dozing off. Hopefully he can help me study for my exam tomorrow though...

Poco a Poco

Almost a week has passed since I updated here!... although not too much has happened. Continuing with Spanish classes which take up the majority of the morning. After being a little disatisfied and very frustrated with the food in Spain (even nice looking places had some bad quality veggies??) we decided to really get into making our own little kitchen in our room. We've also finally found an AWESOME grocery store with a lot more to choose from (even peanut butter, but we're holding off for now). We've been making spinach salads, and of course we still stick to our bread and cheese staple, but at least we are getting some veggies in every day.

We've made a few more friends in our Spanish classes which is nice, but every time we go out we make friends almost instantly. Salamanca is filled with students (and right now most of them are foreigners as well). Although I haven't been chatting with too many Spaniards, I've been practicing my Spanish with plenty of other willing European and Brazilian students who are learning as well. It's definitely a very diverse city in terms of culture!

We're going to check out the library today so we can start checking out some books, and renting movies as well. We've also begun to look into the classes we will be taking at the University. As PEI students (basically the program we are a part of as international students ) we are able to choose from ANY of the 900+ classes offered. The guides online are huge so in some ways the diverse range of classes makes it more difficult to decide upon, however it's nice to know we have a lot to choose from.

Here are a few pictures that I took around Salamanca... It is a very old city, as the architecture and overall style shows. Most of the buildings are also all made of the same type of rock, which is of a golden color. They are most beautiful (like at the Plaza Mayor) at night when they are merely lit by lights. However, since they all look the same it makes it more likely for Emily and I to get lost more frequently!

We're getting into the swing of things though - adjusting ourselves more to the Spanish eating and sleeping schedules, and becoming even more familiar with the city (which isn't very big/hard to figure out).

Manana es siempre otro dia

It was a long weekend of tours and cathedrals, and we were happy to finally arrive back to Salamanca on Sunday. We were up early Monday morning (8 am) though to take the placement exam, so still groggy we managed to get up and make our way to the center to meet the group. It's still dark that early in the morning, and the sprinklings of rain didn't help us to wake up any more. The test only took about a half hour and then Emily and I decided to skip the tour of the city and go take an early 3 hour siesta :)

We are staying at a Residencia here (kind of like a dorm) until February 1st when we will move into our apartment!! We put down a deposit today on an apartment, only 1 street from the plaza mayor -- so hopefully we won't get lost anymore! We're very excited to move in, start decorating our rooms and getting real groceries (not just pan and cheese everyday) and do some cooking. It's a pretty big apartment with 6 bedrooms (3 Spaniards, 1 Italian and us), a nice kitchen, 2 balconies, and a living room. The landlord is a woman who lives an apartment away and was super nice and is even going to give us some towels and linens which saves us some time, stress and money.

Classes are Monday - Friday from 9am-2pm. Emily and I are in 3 out of the 4 classes. I have 2 hours of grammer, 1 hour of conversation, 1 hour of Spanish culture, and the last hour is a writing class. Hopefully by the end of the month & these classes we will be ready for the real work to begin in the University.

We try to speak only Spanish, but definitely doesn't work all of the time. My accent needs lots of work  here and still trying to get used to new phrases and grammer, but all in all things are good and now that we've got an apartment secured, one less thing to worry about.

New Friends and Food

APARTMENT UPDATE!

... still in progress...

But looking for pisos has helped us meet some more people in the city. We looked at a room in a house of Italians, and then we were invited there for a dinner party the next night. They made a delicious dinner of pasta and shrimps and after a long evening of chatting and cards we ended the night with some more pasta! Que Rico!!

We woke up late the next day and hurried to pack our bags and catch a bus to Madrid. As always, we got here a little late, but easily found our way to the hotel and to our group. We joined for the last half of a quick meeting and then went out to a nice dinner in the city. 

Despite the fact that as a vegetarian I cannot really eat any Spanish food here, Madrid has been a much more accomadating city to that fact. We've had delicious salads and lots of cheese and fruits so far... and of course mas pan!

Exhausted once again we went to sleep early last night for another busy day. We had breakfast at the hotel and then off to el Museo Prado. We enjoyed a guided tour for an hour, seeing the works of el Greco, Velazquez, y Goya. We took a break after the tour and then with Emily as my art guide, we made our way around the museum to see Rubens, Tiziano, Rafael and others.

It is time for a quick siesta before we head off to the Palacio Royal and then more free time to explore the city tonight, maybe some churros y chocolate? yumm 

Hasta Luego! 

3 days down!

It's been a busy first three days here in Espana. Flights went smoothly and I tried to sleep as much as possible. I arrived in Zurich where I waited anxiously for my next flight to Madrid! y Emily! My flight was delayed so while Emily waited for me at the airport, afraid I was not coming, I was finally on my flight, power napping to get ready for the days ahead.

After slight cellular complications we finally found each other! With excessive baggage (each) we made our way to a taxi, to the bus station, and squeezing into some tiny elevators, an hour later we were on the bus and headed to our new home... well for a few days.

We sat exhausted, and sore, after our long journeys, and began to chat. The Swedish girl next to us joined in and turned out she had studied in Salamanca the semester before and was headed back for work. She gabbed about Salamanca - the city, the people, tapas, etc. - filling us in on basically everything which really boosted my tired spirits. Two and a half hours later we arrived at the city limits, watching the lit up historic cathedrals over the River Tormes come closer.

Lugging our bags (again in the tiny elevator) and into the station, I ran over to the open panaderia and bought a baguette for only 70 centavos!... this has now become our staple food. We got into a taxi and made our way to the city center, where we drove down a pedestrian st. to our cute little hostal right by the plaza mayor.

Sophia, our new SWEDISH! friend took us out the first night to get tapas. Nightlife in Spain really doesn't start until late night, and by midnight and one glass of sangria we were ready to say goodnight. The next day we slept in until 2pm! We defeated the jet lag and were ready to do some apartment shopping... which so far has been only mas o menos.

That's all we're really focused on right now, and hopefully we'll have a permanent home in the next few days!