Fantastic Views

Today in conversation class, the randomly chosen topic on the handout she gave us was about… the environment and being green! So it was basically like being home, talking about saving the planet and whatnot.

We took a real siesta today, and it was fantastic. Hour long naps are way better than half hour laying-there-almost-asleep times.

Then we took an actual tour of the cathedrals, where we got to see the old cathedral, and then go up the towers! So I've now been on the roof of the old cathedral, on the second level of the new cathedral, and on the roof of the new ones. Here's some photos to demonstrate, because this was just super cool.

The Old Cathedral

Turns out, Franco's headquarters were in Salamanca, and this is the house where he used to live. The super nice Audis & Opels you see are there because there was a big meeting of all the ministers of education from all across Europe at the university today. Oh and the princes came to the University as well. So there have been policia everywhere for the last three days, just standing around and making sure no one's doing anything crazy.

Looking muy española today

This is what happens when they take us on roofs...

See that stripe in the middle of the photo? That's the balcony that goes around the entire church that we were standing on. Now see those white dots at the bottom? Those are people. Yeah it's that high up.

Earthquake problems. But it's been like that for several hundred years so, y'know, no worries, right?

Salamanca! Those big towers on the left are the Universidad Pontifica, which is a private college of the Vatican, if I recall correctly. The Plaza Mayor is on the left half of the photo somewhere, and my apartment (aka mi piso) is wayyyyy out there. But it is in that direction.

Adriana y yo

Salamanca's really unique because they have two cathedrals, which doesn't happen in like 95% of the cathedral-owning world. It's because they had the "Old Cathedral" which housed the original university. But then, because Salamanca is such a fantastic city, people started coming from far and wide to live in Salamanca. And with that, mass became a lot more crowded, as well as all the other functions the cathedral had. So they started building the new one, which was supposed to replace the old one. The thing is, and I'm not sure if you've noticed, but these things are large. And back in the day, they took a long time to build. So, three centuries later when the new one was finished, they were no longer like, "Hey, this old cathedral is small and slightly useless, let's replace it." They were more like, "Hey, this is a pretty sweet piece of history we've got, let's not tear it down." I'm sure it happened exactly like that.

Anyway, so we did the tour, then went to ISA and took this "pretest" that we'll take again at the end of the year to see how much better our level of Spanish gets. It was basically the same thing as the other test we took. Woo.

Then we came home and María's mom was here visiting, so we met her and talked for a short while, until they started arguing about the telephone service María's mom uses (everyone picture trying to explain technology to your parents…) so we snuck off to our room until dinner, which was a very delicious sandwich. Ham, tomato, lettuce, mayo, and delicious bread.

Tonight, Salamanca's big festivals to honor their patron figure Virgen de la Vega begin, so it was super busy when we came home for dinner. We'll probably go out and sample the festival a little later. Hasta luego!